50,000,000,000 Downloaded

May 15, 2013

This afternoon the 50,000,000,000th app was downloaded from the App Store and Apple is celebrating by giving away $10,000 in App Store credit to some lucky person that pushed them across that threshold. This was pretty cool. Not the giveaway part. I mean it’s nice, but after Apple takes their 30% cut, they’re really only giving away $7,000. Also, if I have it figured right, the download rate was about 25% higher than average during the last hour of the contest, which may have been worth as much as $500,000 additional revenue for that hour. Not too shabby. (See The Surprising Numbers Behind Apps)

Anyway, that’s not the cool bit. The bit that I thought was cool was the code driving Apple’s fancy app counter. It turns out that it was driven by actual download numbers provided by Apple and updated every hour. It gave me a chance to see if there was anything to be learned looking at real download data. Were there any patterns? Could we learn anything about the time people are most likely to be using the App Store?

It turns out that the answer is yes. Very clearly in fact. Check out this fancy (not actually fancy) chart I made:

Downloads per hour 5/2/2013 – 5/15/2013

Sorry, it’s a little tiny, but basically, like clockwork, the download rate peaked at 11AM (EDT) each day, including weekends. Except for that bizarre spike at the beginning. Not sure what that was. But otherwise, big spike at 11, then tapering off to a low between 7PM & 8PM followed by a mini-spike at 10PM before drifting down to the nadir at around 3AM each day.

This is perhaps a little easier to see if we look at the average number of downloads by hour. Look another graph!

Average downloads by time of day

This might come in handy if, for example, you’re looking to make sure you time your app’s release for maximum exposure. You probably want to make sure your app is ready to go ahead of the crowd which begins building at around 7AM EDT.

I was hoping I could continue to monitor the download rate after the contest ended and see if any longer term patterns materialized, but sadly, Apple seems to have shut it down. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted. While I wouldn’t count on it, maybe they’ll fire it back up again at some point. In the meantime, if you’re interested, you can grab the spreadsheet containing everything I collected during the contest. Please note that this is a Numbers spreadsheet. Also note that I missed a few hours here and there and Apple didn’t seem to update their stats at 6AM GMT for some reason. I interpolated and highlighted those cells in red for those cases.

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Winning the Lottery

April 26, 2013

What a crazy day yesterday was. First, Goalposts, my new app, was released yesterday. When I submitted it for review I just happened to select April 25 as the availability date. I kind of wanted to manually release it after it was approved, but didn’t see the option so, whatever, fine, April 25 sounds good. Little did I know at the time that WWDC tickets would also go on sale on that date. I thought briefly about changing it but, you know, once an app is submitted for review it kind of scares me to mess with any of it, so I left it. It went into review and was approved Wednesday afternoon, so here we are.

You know when I first had the idea I thought it was going to be really great. Scratch that. I thought it would *do* really great because it was different, useful, fun, cute, what have you. Of course I believe it’s really great, why would you write something if you felt otherwise?! But as the project progressed I was less certain how well it would do and my expectations gradually drifted back down to reality. By the time yesterday rolled around I had no expectations at all.

While we didn’t knock WhatsApp from the top of the charts (as if), I am nevertheless so grateful for the response we received. Just blown away. And not because we finished the day amongst the top 100 in Lifestyle, although that was a pleasant surprise. No, what really got me was the support from friends and fellow devs.

I spent all those nights and weekends cranking out code, and at certain point it’s 4 in the morning and you’re re-writing the timeline layout for the third freakin’ time, you start to wonder why am I doing this? Is anyone even going to care? Then yesterday arrived and I start seeing people re-tweeting my announcement, sharing it on Facebook, passing along their congratulations, and I swear even just a “hey looks pretty good, nice work”, feels a little like winning the lottery. It really meant a lot and I just want to say thank you all. It also made me think: you know I see friends release stuff all the time and I think to myself, oh good for them, that’s awesome, but don’t actually *say* anything. I need to do a better job at actually taking a few moments to pass long an attaboy. It takes so little effort, but means so much.

So, speaking of winning the lottery, anyone hear about that WWDC thing yesterday!?

Yeah.

Like so many of you I waited anxiously for 12 o’clock to roll around so I could purchase my ticket. And like so many of you I was denied. Shortly after all this went down, the complaints about process of purchasing WWDC tickets began again this year. Don’t get me wrong, WWDC is definitely broken. I just don’t know what the solution is. Daniel Jalkut (whose fine app I’m using using to compose my thoughts…. attaboy!) went so far as to suggest that we should just give up on WWDC altogether. While that seems a bit drastic, something needs to be done. And you know, honestly Apple did try something different this year. Didn’t work out too well, but clearly they’re aware of the problem and trying to come up with a solution. Part of that was the pre-sale announcement and the other was announcing that videos will be made available while the conference is underway. I believe they did that in hopes that maybe that would lessen demand. Doesn’t seem to have worked, but still.

So my last WWDC was 2011, which was coincidentally Steve Jobs last WWDC as well. I remain somewhat optimistic that my chances of going to another WWDC are slightly better than his. I’m actually still thinking about going maybe for altWWDC or just to hang out for a few days. Half of what makes WWDC so special is getting to meet up and hang out with your peers. I’m never so fired up about what I do for a living as when I get back from a conference, especially WWDC, so it’s very tempting. I think I’m going to take the weekend to mull it over and decide what to do then.

In the meantime, thank you all again for the kind words yesterday. And perhaps I’ll get a chance soon to express my appreciation in person. We’ll see!

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The Hard Part

April 25, 2013

When it comes to most things, especially if I put my mind to it, I’m fortunate enough to become pretty good them. Or at least proficient. Especially, and I hope this doesn’t come off as egotistical, at writing software. It’s just something that’s always come naturally to me for some reason ever since I wrote my first “app” 30 or so years ago (I’m old) on my lovely Atari 400 (complete with 48k RAM upgrade! woo!).

But what I’m not good at is interacting with people. Just never could get the hang of it for some reason. What’s worse, I’ve had people tell me on more than one occasion that, before getting to know me, I’ve come across as stuck up. Jerky even. To use the technical term. Typically that impression fades once you get to know me a little bit. Probably. I think. And, I’m also not very good at asking for help or tooting my own horn. I don’t want to be a bother. Or at least I tell myself that. Once I get to know you, I do better. Though this affliction can kind of make that difficult.

This is a problem. You see, my wife and I released our latest app from Quiet Spark today: Goalposts. And now we have to figure out how to get people to notice. In fact she’s downstairs right now, feverishly sending out press releases, in hopes that someone will notice our creation in a sea of apps.

A lot of my indie developer friends also have friendships with tech journalists which gives them a bit of a leg up when it comes time to promote their latest wares. That’s not to say that they’re are getting a free pass just because they have friends in the right places. These people are really good and do fantastic work. But when there are 850,000 apps to pick from, the most fantastic work doesn’t count for much unless you can get people to notice. That old chestnut “it’s not what you know, but who you know” is certainly applicable when trying to get your work to stand out in the App Store. And getting to know people is just so very hard for me.

Even among other developers, I’m really quiet. There’s an IRC channel I’ve hung out in off an on for years and yet I’ve only spoken there a handful of times and then generally in response to a direct question. And during beta testing, I asked for help, but it was kind of like hey guys, hate to be a bother, but I’ve been working on this app and I could use a little help testing if you wouldn’t mind, but if you don’t have time or something you know, no big deal. So yeah, I’m a terrible salesman, and really truly need to work on my people skills. Although, at 44, one wonders how much change is even possible at this point.

So, what I guess I’m saying is I’ve got this new app out and it would mean a lot to me if you could maybe spread the word a bit or something, you know, if it’s not too much to ask and all, but don’t feel obligated or anything.

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App Store Turnover by Category Pt. 2

April 21, 2013

Yesterday I took a look at the turnover and composition of the Top 400 grossing iPhone chart by category which is, unsurprisingly, dominated by games. 75% of the top 400 grossing apps are games. I thought today I would drill down deeper into games and look at which sub-genres are getting the most traction and which have the most staying power. Pretty much the same format as yesterday. Again I’m looking at April 20, 2012 versus April 20, 2013.

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App Store Turnover by Category

April 20, 2013

There have been some stories recently about how games continue to dominate the charts on the App Store and have even been increasing that lead. Seems like someone mentioned, or perhaps I just thought it to myself, that while games own the charts, they have a shorter lifespan than apps in other categories, and therefore have a smaller window over which to generate revenue. I’ve been wondering about this and decided to see if I could figure out whether or not this was true.

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